I see plenty of discussion for what may win the Oscar for best picture of 2017, and what would come in for best director and the two screenplay categories. A thread appears here discussing best actress as wide open. (Perhaps it really is.)

I am getting this feeling it may be that Lady Bird is about to score with the five major Oscars for which it has the potential to prevail: best picture; director and original screenplay for Greta Gerwig; actress Saoirse Ronan; and supporting actress Laurie Metcalf.

Gerwig, specifically with best director, seems the least likely in that area because of attention elsewhere. It won’t happen for her without a nomination from the Directors Guild of America. Four of the last five years’s best-picture winners did not get corresponding director wins—a really uncommon stretch that is quite the break in pattern.

Best actress has people looking at Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), but I think Saoirse Ronan fits a profile for many of the best-actress winners (age 35 or younger) I have been seeing for most of my life. (I was born in 1971.) McDormand won the 1996 best-actress Oscar for Fargo (my favorite win); but, having won before could be more an advantage for Ronan, who was nominated two previous times and is about to get her third nom at age 23.

Laurie Metcalf, who won from National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and National Society of Film Critics, could have what is just a temporary blow not winning the Golden Globe. But, supporing-actor frontrunner Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project) also lost there and, yet, won the same groups—plus New York Film Critics Circle—as Metcalf. Who before experienced that but won the Oscar anyway? Anjelica Huston in Prizzi’s Honor (1985).

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is in the same category of screenplay as Lady Bird—original—and that category’s outcome may be the key as to which of these two films has more the advantage.

The Golden Globes, looked at as such a powerful bellwether, will usually see no fewer than two of its film winners go on to win the Oscar. Or, another way of putting it, in usually no fewer than two of the four acting winners at the Academy Awards won earlier at the Golden Globes. (Some years, it was just two; some, it was three; some, it was all four.) My feeling is Gary Oldman and Saoirse Ronan will win in lead. (Right now, as it is historically the record, the youngest best-actor winner was Adrien Brody, at age 29. That may be a barrier for 22-year-old Timothee Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name.)

Does anyone else get the sense that the stars may be aligning for Lady Bird to quite possibly the extent I am suggesting?

I think that Gerwig will lose Best Director to del Toro if nominated. Ronan can definitely take down McDormand and Hawkins. Ronan has been everywhere as of late. Also, she could very well benefit from the divisiveness of Three Billboards and steal Frances’ second Oscar. As for Best Supporting Actress, I don’t see Janney completely sweeping the awards circuit. I think that Metcalf will storm back on Thursday and at SAG. After that, who knows?

A woman has won BD, yes, but she did so with a war film (perfect for boys and men), not a high school film about a girl, that was the only other frontrunner in a not confusing year with…her ex husband’s film. Who had already won. Who nobody wanted to reward again and had a science fiction film that couldn’t even get a screenplay nomination because once again, it had a terrible script.

People forget that when a woman won Best Director, her film was also a technical achievement. Winning tech Oscars and getting all the right nominations that Lady Bird won’t get.

Greta Gerwig might be nominated for BD, but she’s not winning.

If 3B looses screenplay to Lady Bird it still can win BP, and her win should be seen as a consolation prize first, and then as some sort of sign that 3B won’t win BP. Lady Bird (and Get Out) are the perfect films to win the award that many times goes to the indie that won’t win anywhere else.

Metcalf is not as comfortable as she once was. SAG will tell. Same goes with Ronan who I doubt wins at SAG over McDormand.